On "Farming"

Grim Dawn Development Updates
181

I guess, Betrayer, what you’re really talking about is: Personal Choice. Besides, the solution is to play single player. Because you know, once the game gets popular, people have the need to feed their knowledge craving.

I’m not so much disagreeing with you, more like saying, you’re kind of in a tough preference: Being that you don’t WANT there to be information. There’s no stopping it. You’re basically right in that you have no solution to this; except single player and forced hermitage.

Now, I actually dig that. It’s also a trend not many prefer.

Cheers for what it’s worth,

Malpheas

182

First, you’ll have to forgive me for not reading the whole thread, and if this has already been mentioned. (also this is my first post after getting legendary preorder)

Having seen the term “monotony” associated with boss runs, i immediately thought “Arena”.
Let me explain : each boss you kill throughout the normal game gets addeed to a random roster in the arena. After you kill so many of them, you get a loot box that is tied to your level (basically level 40 characters will get lvl 40 and under loot and also not necessarily good quality).

Each boss would be scaled to your level to make it more challenging, and maybe even extra attacks.

i know there are probably loads of flaws with this, but i think it may be something worth thinking about.

thanks in advance to your feedback

183

Yes, the arena idea was already discussed before (perhaps not in this thread).
I personnaly think it’s an excellent idea.

184

If the arena idea falls into the category of “we would like to but cant with the time/budget constraints”, I was thinking after reading Randomness’s post (and by the way, welcome to the wait).

How about a quest dude that is some sort of boat-guy who could be hired (not sure really if it should be prohibitively expensive or not) to teleport you across the world with stops at all major bosses. Sort of like a hunter-tour-guide type thing where you could not only farm the bosses but also get rewards based on how well you killed them all?

And if the GD engine is different than TQ in the respect that a boss could scale to player level, that would be totally awesome, but their loot better scale too.

185

I must say I was quite excited to hear about this - as a long time player/strategizer on the TQ forums (different account) I am looking forward to this game :slight_smile:

As to the farming issues - yes it can be boring. But for the packrats amongst us, farming a boss for the sweet drop we want is actually an important part of the game. I remember how much it irritated me in Hellgate: London (a prime example of how NOT to do this kind of game) that I couldn’t boss farm, meaning my character’s gear was 100% dependant on random luck.

I think a recent game (Torchlight) had a fantastic idea that could be adapted here. You could buy a pricey one use item to allow you entrance to an extra, shortish level that was exeptionally difficult but dropped amazing loot.

This could be adapted to this.
How about ‘Boss Scrolls’ (under a cooler name) - bought for some ingame currency (and also perhaps a rare drop off mobs). Each time you kill a powerful boss it unlocks that bosses ‘glyph’. You can use a scroll (or a set number of these scrolls) to open a portal to a short, but intense level (either randomly generated or chosen from a large list of small, simple maps) filled with powerful enemies and ending with the selected boss.

This could be framed as a memory, time travel, pocket universe…I dunno. But this would allow people who want to farm to do it (without that gimpy feeling of diminishing returns), but would place some kind of cost/limit on doing it endlessly.

Oh - and random portals opening every now and then to these areas would be a cool idea too :slight_smile:

EDIT - bosses scaling with character levels is something I have never liked. Take a look at Oblivion for how this rubber-banding can ruin the feeling of leveling up altogether.

186

I’d like that! Like some sort of “temporal rifts” that have spawned in random places as a result of great destruction in the lands of GD! :smiley:

187

Great idea Furycat! I’d prefer that greatly to a “instant warp to the boss” or arena type functionality. Having the item required drop off random mobs would also encourage people to both play through levels and boss farm, rather then just running the boss over and over. It encourages diversity in gameplay and in the end should increase the game’s longevity.

Also, I agree with boss scaling. The “Normal”, “Epic”, and Legendary" bosses should stay at the same difficulty regardless of the player’s level. I would say they should scale somewhat based on number of players though, both in loot quantity and difficulty.

188

If we’re talking about farming then we’re assuming that players can trade items/gold/loot.

Why not just disallow trading? Really, what is the benefit of allowing players to give items or money to other players? It just causes an imbalance.

Don’t allow trading. If you didn’t find it, you can’t use it. Essentially, everything is BoA. That way, if you see someone running around in Awesome Armor™, you know they earned it.

I personally think item trading is a mistake except in MMORPGs.

No trading = no farming. Simple.

189

I SO agree with you, Flambe.

Trading defeats the purpose of a game that is 3/4 about finding loot.

Unfortunately it’s a very unpopular stance to disallow trading.

190

Maybe if this were an MMO where all the good loot was in raids, but that’s not true in ARPG. Without trading people have to farm even more. There is no such thing as trading to finish up a set of items. You have to farm it yourself, if you want it. Thus, No trading = more farming. Simple.

I’m not commenting for or against trading. I don’t usually trade things in ARPGs, but if I really needed the last piece of a set, I’d like to have the option.

191

Agreed, plus as with TQ, there will be ways to trade outside the game if they do not exist (and probably even despite them existing in game), so you do not achieve an enforcement of no trading anyway.

192

No trading = terrible idea

Seriously, trading is awesome in these games. There’s so much loot in TQ there’s not way you can farm it all (unless you play for hundreds and hundreds of hours). According to steam, I have like 200 hours on TQ and I know I don’t even have 1/3 of the available items.

I don’t think they will take this away anyways…would be a silly thing to do:p

193

I dont think this has been mentioned…I’d like to see a Boss Teleport system.

I have recently got back into TQ and I have found that some bosses are a real pain to get to as they are so far away from the nearest teleport. It would be nice to have a warp tile appear nearby once you beat a Boss so you can easily return to it later.

194

Hm, I do not think there is any boss I cannot reach within 3 minutes or so. That time is intentional so you cannot farm a boss every 10 seconds :wink:

195

How much time need to catch Pindleskin in D2? 10-15 sec. Or Mephisto? (sorc\eni armour)? with MH less than a minute (or in solo with properly randomed map less than a 5 sec)
And in D2 for some items chances better than chances getting properly item in TQ.
I was in duty journey and spend almost month on farming(didn’t have TQVault) for getting properly bonus on some runes(got 15 Polyphem’s blunts lol).
I can’t imagine, how much time i need to get 55 level artefact with 35% attack speed. It was really annoying in farming, that rune bonus is less, almost useless, than “complete bonus”. Becouse almost always in Boss chest you can get 1-2 runes, making complete not a problem.
For example:

legendary Herakles - 36 str
+25% Damage 6.74%
40 Armor 6.74%
303 Reduce Armor for 3 seconds 6.74%
41% Pierce Resistance 6.74%
+65 Defensive Ability 6.74%
+450 Health 20.22%
+5% Strength 20.22%
5% Chance of stun for 3 seconds 6.74%
66% Slower Attack for 3 seconds 5.62%
+33 Strength 6.74%
+65 Offensive Ability 6.74%

Odysseus 30% int
+33 Intelligence 21.43%
10% Lightning Resistance 10.71%
10% Cold Resistance 10.71%
10% Fire Resistance 10.71%
+210 Energy 21.43%
+250 Energy 21.43%
18% Elemental Resistance 3.57%

ZEUS’ THUNDERBOLT
7-16 Cold Damage 8.57%
3-20 Lightning Damage 8.57%
+30% Lightning Damage 8.57%
7-16 Damage 8.57%
5% Chance of stun for 3 seconds 25.71%
72 Energy Leech over 3 Seconds 7.14%
66% Slower Attack for 3 seconds 7.14%
+33 Dexterity 8.57%
+15% Attack Speed 17.14%

Look, second - it’s perfect balance item. I will use it anyway, and it have fine bonuses. If i don’t want farming, i may use it as is, also i can try make perfect resists. Other items useless without bonuses

Herakles - 25% damage or 30 str? I used herakles with 60 str for stonebeinder cuffs on mage - it was only once.
5% str. Hmm. can it be converted in more than 25% damage?

(physicalDamageDV*((strengthDV/500)+1))+(strengthDV*0.04)

we have 2k str, get 5%= it will be 100 str. 20% damage + 4. It’s not a 25%. And 2k str almost impossible.
when 5% str can be more than 30 str bonus? Easy - when you have more than 600 str. It’s means - you hero have str as one of primary attribute, can have all armour (i didn’t count dex) So you dont need str.
Other bonuses is also strange. It’s can be used, but for what, if possible make 1 hit=1 kill?

Zeus thunderbolt - it’s annoying item. bonus 30%, item - 9%. I sell other bonuses, and bet, that all not-novice make same

What i want say? Please, make items, that “i got them, i can use them, or trade, or store for other characters.”

196

Actually we discussed this a few pages back. A few alternative ideas for farming have been brought up so far. Any method of being able to instantly farm a boss is not desirable in my opinion though.

197

I personally like the ‘daily quest’ approach to farming: You get a quest from a local NPC to defeat a certain enemy, explore a certain area, collect certain number of certain items, and at the end you get to choose a reward from a short list of options. Now, I don’t know how many ‘daily quest’ (or even if 24 hours is the time frame you want to look at here, the important thing is implementing the quest rewards) NPCs or even quests you would want to have, but in a system like this it is usually risk vs reward. Perhaps one of the options from the NPC is a certain number of special tokens which you can spend at a merchant to purchase a specific high-tier item. I dunno.

198

I didnt say it has to be instant buuut…I’d like it to be a little easier to get to bosses in GD than it is in TQ, it takes me like 10 minutes to slog my way to a lot of the bosses that are at the top of mountains or at the end of dungeons.(ANd Yes I have to kill everything in my way! :o) It makes trying to get a certain drop VERY time consuming as 98+% of the time is spent getting to the boss.

199

To be fair, almost all the bosses in TQ were reachable in a minute, if you had the nearest well. However, if you had to rely on the portals, then yes, it’d take forever. This is what made the farming so tedious, as you tended to just run the same boss over and over.

200

Why not make an arena where you can fight bosses you have defeated. First you would get some waves of minor enemies before the big boss will appear. This way you can go straight into the action but still need to deal with a few enemies before reaching the boss.